The Four Secrets of a

Successful Open

Source Business

Miguel Valdés-Faura BonitaSoft CEO & Co-Founder

08/08/2012 1

What makes a Successful Open Source Business?

There are four secrets:

The Market Analysis

The Democratization Process

Community Management

A High-Volume Sales Machine

The Market Analysis

Is your market mature and fully evangelized?

What is your value proposition… besides being open

source?

How your business model is going to be disruptive?

Can you expand your opportunity?

Do your homework. What is your opportunity?

1-Day Deployment

Cost Effectiveness

Low risk Connectivity

Extensibility

5

Costs 10 times less than traditional

software

Quick time to value

Access to source code Easy to connect

to external and internal systems

Improvements from thousands of

contributors

Define your differentiators

The Democratization Process

7

Bring your Solution to the masses… Stay away from the elite

Democratization is:

Creating options

Offering alternatives

Challenging the status quo

Disrupting traditional pricing models

Shake things up

08/08/2012 8

Create great software

Build an active community

High volume business

Develop partnerships (Do not be open source exclusive)

Viral marketing: get the word out!

How do you do it?

Community Management

Invest in a dedicated community manager or team

Identify product extension points or contributions

Work on content that encourages technology and product

adoption

Develop product tools or features that foster contributions

Best practices for community management

Monitor and participate in your forums & analyze

discussions

Highlight active community members and get their

feedback

Engage in other communities

Best practices for community management

A High-Volume Sales

Machine

Define your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Acquire technology that allows you to track

Constantly monitor performance

Make adjustments quickly

08/08/2012 13

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

Feb Mar Apr May June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan-12 Feb-12 Mar-12 Apr-12 May-12 June-12

Measurement

14

Define your revenue model

The result

#1 Growing BPM vendor

1.5 million downloads

20,000 community members

400 customers

June 2009

• BonitaSoft is founded

• €4,5M Series A: Ventech & Auriga

•100k downloads • Bonita project creation

• INRIA Labs (France)

• Open Sourced

• 100 customers

• +500k downloads

• New offices in France,

US and China

• €8M Series B: Serena, Ventech & Auriga

• 250 customers

• +1M downloads

March 2001 December 2010 October 2011

BonitaSoft Is:

+60k product

downloads

every month

+10.000 leads

every month

+250k website

visitors every month

1 new customer every

business day

50% -50% deals new

business vs upselling

every quarter

400 customers in 50

different countries

+300 connectors to

enterprise & cloud

systems

+50 System Integrators

partners in 30

countries

+35.000 discussions in

community forums

THANK YOU!

18 October 10, 2010